Charles Koch bemoans lack of influence over 2016 race

Charles Koch is “disappointed” with the line-up of Republican candidates in the 2016 cycle, and is surprised by the lack of influence he and his brother have wielded so far.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist, said he’ll eventually support a candidate who he agrees with on some things, but that it’s hard to get excited. He said a list presented to all the candidates about the Kochs' political arm's priorities “doesn’t seem to faze them much. You’d think we could have more influence.”

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“It is hard for me to get a high level of enthusiasm because the things I’m passionate about and I think this country urgently needs aren’t being addressed,” he said.

Koch also bashed the candidates currently leading the Republican field — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and businessman Donald Trump. Koch said that if Trump was successful with his proposal to require all Muslims entering the U.S. to register with the government, then “well, then you destroy our free society.”

“Who is it that said, ‘If you want to defend your liberty, the first thing you’ve got to do is defend the liberty of people you like the least’?” he continued.

Koch then went on to attack Cruz’s proposal to carpet-bomb ISIL. “I’ve studied revolutionaries a lot,” he said. “Mao said that the people are the sea in which the revolutionary swims. Not that we don’t need to defend ourselves and have better intelligence and all that, but how do we create an unfriendly sea for the terrorists in the Muslim communities? We haven’t done a good job of that.”

Koch said that there are 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide and asked, what “are we going to do: go bomb each one of them?”

Koch, his brother David, and their network had pledged to spend $889 million on policy and political battles headed into November 2016. But Charles Koch said in October that the political network of donors revised its estimate and instead planned on spending $750 million on politics over two years.

But progressive super PAC American Bridge said Koch was selling himself short. A spokeswoman said in an emailed statement, "Now they have a GOP presidential field crafted in their image and full of candidates begging for the nearly $1 billion they plan to spend in 2016 — save for Donald Trump, who has put a thorn in their plans to buy a White House that pushes their self-enriching agenda."